Mr. Tom Ryan:

In the normal course of a year the collective picture from counties would be that they would expect to return a collective surplus of about €4 million. For the year we are about to complete, there will be a deficit of €12 million. Funding for counties comes from three sources, the governing body, sponsorship and gate receipts. The cumulative gate receipts around the country for local championship games is in the order of €10 million or €11 million. That revenue is gone. Even extrapolating at a very small level, in Munster we played 1,200 or 1,300 games over the last few weeks since we went back to activity with an average of 150 people at each of those games, which is very modest, and an average admission price of about €8. That adds up to €1.5 million which, although in the broad scheme of the national Exchequer and of our national finances in the GAA and so on it might not seem hugely significant, locally is the lifeblood of those counties and clubs. Ordinarily it is a precarious enough job to keep a county and a club running, the Chairman is right. What we have experienced over the last six months makes that even more difficult. We and those people will have a job to rectify and set right those finances next year.